


Mitigations

by Merfilly



Series: To Build A Future [22]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:16:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starscream's plans go further, while others do as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mitigations

Starscream walked through the forest of support girders being erected over the high plateau that had been chosen by the combined vote of the Flights. Granted, said voting had been accomplished with many fights, and strong-arming of weaker duos or trines to support stronger ones' chosen locations. The fact the plateau had been Starscream's first choice had _nothing_ to do with it coming out on top at all. He had left much of the designing to others, and was rather intrigued that Thundercracker was showing a real talent for that aspect of life. Of them all, he was actually the one built and intended for true military service, not just the necessary length of time Seekers had been expected to serve before pursuing their own lives.

The Air Commander had bitter memories of how that had been twisted into eternal servitude, with 'rest of their lives' postponed indefinitely by crisis after crisis that only a flying death squad could contend with. How much it had cost Starscream, with Sentinel Prime's harsh use of their abilities, never letting them free to be whomever or whatever they had been sparked for. There would never be a cycle that Starscream escaped the memory of his need for revenge blossoming in the pointless death of one who had never, ever been made for war.

Now, shaped as much by the assassination he had used to plunge Cybertron into change as by the millennia of war, Starscream hardly remembered who that younger version of himself had wished to be. In seeking freedom for his kind, he had reforged himself into the very thing he had detested then, a warrior who could not lay down his blades. Walking among the skeleton of what would be the new Seeker haven, he could think of a future where Seekers did chose their own flight patterns, yet he could not resist the lure to ascend, to have more power for himself, so that he would never be at another's command.

His audials picked out the sound of an incoming engine before Acid Storm called the designation of the incoming jet on the common band as a form of all-clear. His whole class operated as a military unit, but that would change in time. Skywarp's return would be the beginning of it.

::Join me below, at the laboratories.:: Starscream's command to Skywarp was privately sent, as the Air Commander hurtled up and transformed, streaking out of the girders and down around the front side of the high scarp where certain facilities had been blasted and carved out of the sheer facing.

::'Scream… don't ever send me to disable your booby traps again.:: There was honest pain in Skywarp's send, as well as grudging admiration for his trine-lead's ability at such things.

Starscream did not dignify that with a response; it had been a vorn of vorns since he hid that failsafe on Alpha. So what if he had forgotten all the details of how to disable the remotes? Skywarp was a teleporter and best suited to dodging, after all.

The pair met at the lab's entrance, and walked in with Starscream in the lead. Once they reached his private section, and had keyed the code, Skywarp sagged against the closest berth inside. His optics took in the five waiting frames and grimaced.

"Only four were still viable. The fifth had lost power long enough before that the shield case had cracked."

"Four is a beginning." Starscream came to his trine-mate and started opening the missile bays. "Four of our own, true Allspark creations…"

"Yeah, and what if they don't fuse right to our kind of frames? They're Autobot sparks."

Starscream's optics gleamed. "They will thrive. You'll see." Never, in all his vorns of experience, had Starscream been so thankful for a chance encounter with the Autobot Cosmos shortly before the loss of the Allspark. The explorer had bought his continued existence dearly, and Starscream had tucked the bounty away for use at some later date, never expecting it to come so many vorns later.

`~`~`~`~`

If Skywarp had left Alpha's surface only a few orns later than he had, there would have been something more to see than the research stations and debris from the cataclysm that had been the outcome of using the space-bridge to suck Cybertron to that organic-infested solar system. Astrotrain was there to greet the first of those who had answered Soundwave's summons, on the far side of the moon where independent scans would fail to see them. Any incidental glimpses of their arrivals would be erased by the mech who controlled Cybertron's communications.

As the scattered remnants of the once mighty Decepticon army came home, Astrotrain used the words Soundwave had given him to paint the picture of their home perfectly for the hard-bitten warriors. Not a one of them was ready to accept peace, nor would they be, until Soundwave had his way.

`~`~`~`~`

Scion knew he had been watched the entire time he walked through the tightly clustered dwellings, his wings tucked in far tighter against his frame than he ever wanted to admit. His solitary stroll into what was predominantly Autobot territory was both brazen and stupid, but his Lord wished it of him. He passed many vacant mechs, the wrecks of those who had survived the cataclysm in frame but not spark. Trust the soft Autobots to take them in instead of just leaving them to the work gangs Hook had established.

"You don't belong here."

The shorter, stockier frame-class was still a flier, though planetary bound if Scion remembered his classification system correctly. The speaker also showed no fear as he stepped down into the path of the Seeker wearing bold Decepticon sigils.

"Free planet," Scion forced himself to say, aware of others circling in.

"Maybe for your kind," the squat flier told him with a dismissive snort.

"I say for all kinds," Scion said, half-meaning it, as Megatron's dream floated in his processor. "But it can't happen if we keep dividing ourselves in classes and factions." He could, _would_ do this, because his Lord wanted it.

"So you walked down into the slums to what? Prove we're one kind?" The Autobot pushed right up into Scion's fields and face, glaring.

Scion did not flinch. "Maybe that's just why I came, to learn more of my fellow Cybertronians. Care to be my guide?"

The Autobot gaped at him a long moment, then shook his helm and fell back a little, smile slowly dawning on the dour plates. "Get a load of this, will ya? Fearless and crazy! He might just fit in!" While the others started laughing around them, the red flier threw an introduction pulse into his fields. "Powerglide."

"Scion."

"Well, keep right up, Scion, if you want to know how it is down in the slums." Powerglide fell in beside the Decepticon, and they began moving further into the Autobot territory.


End file.
